The beauty of
coming out

Well, it's been a year. And everything in life seems somehow sweeter. I've been doing concerts for a lot of years, but since coming out in The Advocate last April, it's as if I were taking the stage with my saxophone for the very first time--finally stepping into my shoes fully and completely. On our tour last summer, the music seemed better, the shows were more fun, and, to my great surprise, attendance at the concerts actually increased. For the past 15 years of my life, coming out seemed like the ultimate gamble. I was worried about my career. I was worried that fans would desert me in droves, that the radio station where I host a morning show would pull the plug, that my record sales would nose-dive. Simply put, I was concerned that life as I knew it would change dramatically. Turns out, I was wrong. The only thing that really changed was me. Now I can finally be "me" in every aspect of my life. The big loss I feared never materialized. Instead of losing people along the way, I gained people...and in the most unlikely ways. I also gained something else--something invaluable that I'd been searching for forever: I finally felt like a whole person. The first day that the magazine started arriving in people's mailboxes, I got an e-mail from k.d. lang. It was one sentence--like, "Congratulations, the water's fine." I thought, Wow, this is amazing! Then I met David Mixner, the veteran gay rights activist, and the next month, at his request, I was playing at a fund-raiser for marriage equality at Sen. Ted Kennedy's house in Washington, D.C. I thought, How did I get here?! Opportunities I could only imagine before were suddenly becoming my reality. I got a call from People magazine. They wanted to make me one of their 50 most eligible bachelors. Huh?! I had been trying forever to get even a CD that I've released reviewed in People, and with all due respect, they couldn't have cared less. Then I do an Advocate interview, and, presto, I'm in. I scratched my head: What's different? Why is all this happening now? Well, finally there was some kind of dimension in my life where there wasn't before. The radio station where I work, 94.7 The Wave in Los Angeles, even used the People story as a sales tool for my show. They made this beautiful flier and sent it out to clients to drum up new business. They were proud that their morning host was in the magazine, and it made me so proud of them. I got countless e-mails and calls from colleagues and friends in radio and the music business, saying, "Way to go." Most important, there was an outpouring of acceptance from fans--and I mean total support.

I was most concerned about the men and women I had seen at shows repeatedly: What would they think? Would they ever be back? Well, it felt to me that they finally appreciated being let in, in a way. Their relationship to the music and to me had been strengthened by this one simple act. And, yes, they did come back, with even more passion. And there's one very shy 15-year-old up in Northern California, a young sax player who read the interview online, and it was the impetus for him to reach out for a little bit of guidance. Interestingly, he's not gay, but I think there was something about my revealing myself that had some resonance with him and helped him come out of his shell. I spoke with him several times. I think I learned even more from him than he did from me. For so many years I had built up this wall of fear, and it seemed insurmountable. And finally last April, something inside me decided to try to break it down. I got on the other side, and when I looked back at where this wall had been I saw that it had been an illusion--a total figment of my imagination. And I realized that this wasn't just about my coming-out. There was a real life lesson here: When you face your fears head-on and get through them, you realize there's so much more you can do in life if you take fear out of the equation. It's all about getting on the other side of the wall. I am so thankful that for me, this was a really beautiful lesson to learn.